On October 29, 1974, RCA Records released David Live, David Bowie's first official live album. An hour before the first show at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, David Bowie's band refused to walk on stage. The musicians had just learned that the concerts would be recorded for Bowie's first official live album, David Live, and that they would each receive only the standard union fee of 70 dollars. They demanded 5,000 dollars apiece and sat down.
The Diamond Dogs tour and its cost
The standoff in July 1974 nearly derailed the album that RCA Records released on October 29 of that year. Bowie was touring Diamond Dogs, his most ambitious production to date, with a stage designed as the post-apocalyptic Hunger City from that album. The set had cost 250,000 dollars and the largest band Bowie had ever assembled, led by Michael Kamen, was there to perform it.
The recordings capture the first leg of that tour, before Bowie dismantled the elaborate staging. The second leg, which began that September, was nicknamed the Soul Tour. Bowie stripped away the complex sets, added songs from his upcoming Young Americans album, and stepped out in a new soul image. The cover of David Live shows him from that second leg, already in his soul look, even though the music inside was recorded during the first, summer leg. The stage design drew on German expressionist cinema, particularly Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Bowie's interest in that visual world shaped the Hunger City set, giving the tour a look that matched the dystopian mood of Diamond Dogs.
Plastic soul and the album's chart run
David Live documents Bowie's shift from glam rock to what he called plastic soul. For the first time, fans got an official release of All the Young Dudes, the song Bowie had given to Mott the Hoople in 1972. The album's single, Knock on Wood, came out in the UK on September 13, 1974, and reached the top 10 there. The album itself climbed to number 2 in Britain and number 8 in the United States. The album also reached number 5 in Canada. During the recording, Bowie performed Space Oddity while singing into a radio microphone disguised as a telephone, lifted above the stage on a crane.
The band's revolt was about more than money. The musicians knew the recording would be official and that their work would be preserved, yet they were being paid a union scale that did not reflect that. Bowie's camp had to resolve the dispute before the tapes could roll. The album was mixed at Electric Lady Studios in New York later that July, a month before sessions for Young Americans began. Not everything on the record was captured live. Some backing vocals, saxophone, and the piano solo in Aladdin Sane had to be redone in the studio after the shows. Tony Visconti later said the correct recording dates were July 11 and 12, 1974, though some reissues list them incorrectly. Before settling on the final title, Bowie suggested calling the album David Bowie Is Alive and Well and Living Only in Theory. An auction in 2004 revealed that the working title had been Wham Bam! Thank You Mam!
Critics were not kind. Reviews at the time were largely negative, with complaints about the arrangements and Bowie's strained vocals. Mick Jagger called the Knock on Wood version awful. Bowie himself later said that David Live was the final death of Ziggy Stardust, the persona that had made him a star. He also joked that on the cover he looked like he had just stepped out of the grave. In 1990, Rykodisc and EMI reissued the album on CD with bonus tracks Time and Here Today, Gone Tomorrow.
Bowie himself later said that David Live was the final death of Ziggy Stardust, the persona that had made him a star.
The album has not disappeared. A 2005 reissue added four bonus tracks, including Panic in Detroit and Space Oddity, with a new mix by producer Tony Visconti. In 2016, David Live appeared in the box set Who Can I Be Now? (1974–1976), and a standalone version of the 2005 mix followed a year later. The record remains the clearest snapshot of a performer walking away from one era and into another, with his band demanding to be paid for the privilege of witnessing it.